Only Ever You (30 page)
Authors: Rebecca Drake
“He’s moved out.”
Paige frowned a little, her smooth forehead marred by a little V between her eyes. “When’s he coming back?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want him back,” Jill said, and when she saw the slightest glimmer of pity in Paige’s eyes she used it. “Please tell me—I need to know the truth.”
“I don’t want to be responsible for ruining a marriage,” Paige said in a prim voice.
Jill gave a short, bitter laugh. “David’s done that all by himself.”
Paige sighed. “All right, I’ll tell you, but then I want you to leave.” She waited for Jill’s nod of agreement. “Okay, this is what happened. Several years ago I went to meet Andrew at work. My sister took the kids unexpectedly, and I thought I’d surprise him, take him out to dinner, you know.”
Get to the point, Jill thought, but only nodded, afraid to say anything to stop the other woman.
“It was late. All the secretaries were gone, of course, but no one else was around either. Just a few of the office lights were on. David’s office was one of them, but the door was open and he wasn’t in there. I continued down the hall to Drew’s office, but he wasn’t in there. I thought maybe he was working in the firm’s library, so I kept going. I was a little nervous—it was so dark in the hallway. I saw some light coming from under the door to the library, so I tapped on the door and heard someone say, ‘Come in.’ I pushed open the door and that’s when I saw her.”
“Who?” Jill said, confused.
“One of the first-years. I recognized her. She was lying on one of the tables and she was completely, well, naked.” Paige lowered her voice on the last word, leaning toward Jill. She whispered the rest: “Not a stitch of clothing, legs spread wide, a come-hither smile on her face, until she realized it was me. She screamed and bolted up, trying to cover herself and I screamed, too, and just turned tail and ran.”
“But what does that have to do with David?”
“She was expecting
him,
” Paige said. “Apparently they met there regularly—it turned out that my husband wasn’t even in the building, he was just covering for your husband because David had asked him to.”
“Andrew knew David was having an affair with one of the associates?” Jill felt sick.
“No, not that it was an associate. He knew that David was meeting someone—he’d overheard him on the phone, apparently, and David had confided in him and asked him not to say anything.”
Jill felt slimy just hearing the story, as if she’d been the one to fuck a colleague. “You said years. This was several years ago?”
Paige nodded, shivering from the brisk wind blowing through the lot.
“But why didn’t Andrew tell me? Why didn’t you?”
“Do you really think I would call a woman up and tell her such a sordid little story? To what end? I knew you two were already having problems, this was not too long after, well, you know.”
“After Ethan’s death.”
Paige winced at his name. “Yes.” Her gaze flitted away from Jill’s, then back. “Andrew was furious when he found out it was an associate. He said David could have lost his job and could have cost Andrew his job, too, for covering up for him. I know he talked to David and David agreed that he’d never see the woman again. Of course, the firm got rid of her, too.”
A referee’s shrill whistle made them both flinch and Paige’s face hardened. “I’ve told you everything I know,” she said. “I’m going to go watch my son’s game and you’re going to leave before someone calls the police.” She stalked back toward the field without saying good-bye.
“What was her name?” Jill called after her.
Paige turned, but kept walking. “It doesn’t matter, Jill, it was a long time ago and she left the firm soon after that.”
Jill ran after her. “You said you recognized her—what was her name?”
Paige hesitated. “Lyn,” she said finally. “Lyn Galpin.”
JOURNAL—OCTOBER 2011
I waited outside the office yesterday in the cold. By the time you finally appeared my body had started to go numb and I couldn’t move for a moment, mesmerized by the sight of you laughing and talking, a hint of red silk tie visible at the top of your wool dress coat. You were talking to someone I vaguely remembered, another lawyer, but I didn’t really register her face, not at first. I was too busy looking at you, D.
I saw the little double take you tried to hide when I stepped directly in your path. Your eyes, which had once raked over my body with desire, now looked right through me. You wore the blank look that one reserves for waiters or other service people—the maid who cleans your hotel room, the valet who fetches your car. It was then that I finally realized what should have been obvious all along. I was just one more of these people in your life. I was of no more consequence, and just as replaceable.
Even as I write this you are probably in bed with that new version of me. Does she look at you with that same mixture of yearning and desire to please? You described me once as the American version of a geisha, and I was stupid enough to take it as a compliment.
But I’m not nearly so complacent. The idea of a short-term arrangement existed in your mind, not mine. You’ll laugh, but I believed that you truly loved me. You never told me that these declarations were limited to three-hour time slots on particular afternoons or weekends.
I didn’t really realize until that day on the street. I didn’t want to know. Ridiculous when you think about it—how deluded not to realize that your lack of phone calls and visits since the birth were because you lost interest, not because you were keeping our secret safe.
I dressed up, did you even notice? It took just over eleven long months to lose the extra pounds, but I did it. I chose a dress you always liked, the blue one that hugs my hips just so. It was so cold, but I left my coat open so you could see it.
If you’d smiled at me, acknowledged me in any way, I wouldn’t have gone home and torn that dress off my body. I wouldn’t have cried you out of my system, shoving that dress high on a closet shelf and knocking loose a folder I’d hidden away.
There’s so much paperwork in any legal transaction; pages fluttered to the floor like doves settling in to rest. The thing that jumped out at me was my signature over all the adoption agency’s pages. My signature, not yours. Where your name should have been was a single typed word: Unknown.
And that’s when I knew that the someone I was missing wasn’t you.
DAY TWENTY-THREE
A lot had changed in the last few weeks. Bea circled the street, pretending to search for house numbers, but she needn’t have bothered. The only vehicle on Wakefield Drive was a single patrol car parked outside the Lassiter house, and the middle-aged officer behind the wheel didn’t look up from his newspaper. No more news vans and clamoring groups of reporters. The bus accident had lured all of them away, but they’d be back. She’d see to that.
Someone was home; the BMW sat on the driveway. As Bea circled back, the front door suddenly opened and David Lassiter stepped out carrying a couple of boxes and an overstuffed briefcase. She watched as he tossed both into the trunk of the car.
What did that mean? Had he moved out of the house? Bea drove to the end of the street and pulled to the side of the road, thinking. Seconds later, the BMW came tearing by, kicking up a cloud of leaves, and Bea held her cell phone to her ear and turned her head away as it passed. She waited a second and pulled out after it, careful to stay two car lengths behind. David Lassiter turned onto Route 28 heading toward downtown Pittsburgh, and she struggled not to lose him in multilane, fast-moving traffic. It was only twenty minutes later, when he took the North Shore exit, that she realized where he was heading.
The parking garage next to the office tower that housed Adams Kendrick was virtually empty on a Saturday, but David zipped past all the open spots, pulling into one when he’d reached the seventh floor, the level with a walkway across to the office building. Bea idled halfway up the floor below, then drove past his car, climbing up a level and pulling into a spot where she could look down at the floor where he’d parked. David Lassiter had his back to her, digging into the trunk of his car. She waited until he stepped through the walkway door, stuffed briefcase in one hand, box in another, before starting her car again. She pulled into a spot close to his and waited again, listening to the engine pop and ping. Nobody passed. She slipped on her gloves and dug the copy of the key out of her purse. As Bea walked to his car she heard footsteps, someone approaching, and she quickly turned back to her sedan. A young woman passed, high heels clicking on concrete, yawning as she approached a compact car ten feet away. Bea watched until she’d driven off, looking up and down the length of the garage before approaching David Lassiter’s car again. She opened the driver’s side and popped the latch to the trunk. Empty except for a cardboard box. Bea shifted it over and tugged at a corner of the floor mat, lifting it just enough to slip the knife underneath.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
Bea jerked upright, slamming her head against the raised lid. “Hey, you!” David Lassiter was coming toward her, frown on his face, carrying a full box in his arms. She slammed the lid shut and ran to her own car, fumbling for her keys.
“Stop!” He dropped the box, cardboard splitting as it hit the ground, books and papers exploding onto the dirty concrete. He ignored it, running at her as Bea lurched into the car and slammed the lock button. His fist punched the rear of the car and she jumped.
“Damn it!” She forced the key in the ignition, but he was at the driver’s-side door, pulling on the handle.
“Stop! Who are you?” He had an iPhone out; he held it up to the window.
“Shit!” The motor turned over and Bea put the car in reverse, stepping on the gas. The car leapt back, dragging David Lassiter with it. He held onto the driver’s door, banging on her window, as she jerked the gearshift into drive, but he still wouldn’t let go, running alongside her as she increased her speed, heading down the ramp. He would have to let go; she would make him. She turned the corner hard and dislodged him. He stumbled back, just as another car came speeding up the ramp. It was too late for David Lassiter to react, too late for the other driver to brake. The front fender of the oncoming car hit him hard, sending him flying backward as if his body were weightless. Bea kept driving; behind her she heard brakes squeal and something land with a heavy thud.
* * *
David’s cell phone went straight to voice mail. Jill struggled to sound calm: “Are you still at the house? We need to talk—I’ll be there soon.”
She wanted to catch him off guard with the information, she wanted to see his face when she said Lyn Galpin’s name, but when she pulled into the garage his car was gone.
“He was here about forty minutes ago,” the older patrolman said when she walked to the end of the driveway to ask him, looking up from the paper to glance at the watch digging into his pudgy, freckled arm. Jill thanked him, walked back to the house. The study door was uncharacteristically open, as was the glass lid on one of the antique barrister bookcases. It was as if David no longer cared about anything except getting in and out as quickly as possible. She shook with leftover adrenaline, slamming the lid to the bookcase down, pleased when she saw a hairline crack appear in the glass.
She punched the redial button on her phone. It rang only once before she heard David’s smooth voice. “David Lassiter isn’t available right now.…”
She could barely control the tremor in her own. “I know about the other women, David. I know about Lyn Galpin, you bastard.” Except she didn’t know, not really. She knew nothing about this woman—did the police? She started to dial Detective Ottilo’s number, stopped. They wouldn’t care, not when they were convinced that she’d killed her own daughter. But this Lyn woman could have taken Sophia. Except she didn’t want Sophia, she wanted David. What if she’d killed Sophia? It was unlikely, just as unlikely as Leslie Monroe. Jill tried to convince herself of that even as she began searching the study for something, anything, related to Lyn Galpin.
She had to find her, to know. No matter how illogical it was, this was the only thing Jill had—there were no other leads. She yanked open every desk drawer, sweeping things off the surface and dumping files out on the floor. There was nothing, no mention of other women, no secret stash of business cards or withered collection of cocktail napkins with inked phone numbers bleeding into the paper. No scribbled messages:
Call me
. There were no love letters, no receipts for jewelry that she’d never received or trips she hadn’t known he’d taken. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, and yet she kept hearing Paige’s whisper,
“She was expecting him.… Not a stitch of clothing.”
She sat down in his leather chair and plugged in the desktop computer the police had returned. David obviously hadn’t touched it since. She tried to open his email, but hit a block. She’d always thought he was careful because of work, but had it really been to hide another life? It took several more minutes, but eventually she found a neatly typed list of passwords tucked away in the far back of a bottom desk drawer. She searched his mail and other files, but there was no mention of a Lyn Galpin. She did find Leslie Monroe’s initials on his online calendar, which only spurred her to keep searching.
She tore law books from the shelves and opened them, shaking their pages for anything hidden between, but one after the other came up empty. She let them fall to the floor until she was wading through mess. There was nothing, absolutely nothing. She sank back down in the desk chair and surveyed the chaos she’d created, defeated except for a bitter satisfaction at knowing just how much David would despise seeing his precious study torn apart.
The cursor on the screen blinked on and off. On a whim, she opened a search engine, typed in Lyn Galpin’s name. It took a few seconds, the little icon spinning, before a series of articles appeared, one after another.
